Jony Ive is hoping to change the tech world again after pioneering some of Apple’s most popular products, including the iPhone — and he has the full support of Steve Jobs’ widow.
Investor and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs is a longtime friend of Ive and a financial backer of his design collective, LoveFrom, which he formed after departing Apple in 2019. Ive is now embarking on another technology journey with one of the most recognizable men in Silicon Valley, OpenAI’s Sam Altman.
Ive and Altman announced May 21 that OpenAI would acquire Ive’s hardware startup, IO, to collaborate on an unknown AI tech gadget. Official details are scarce, but a video of Altman and the former Apple design chief said their plan is to create a “family of AI products.”
One of the perks of knowing Ive and being an investor in both LoveFrom and IO is that Powell Jobs has been one of the first to get an early glimpse at the design and prototyping process of the secretive device.
In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Powell Jobs confirmed that she’s been able to observe their progress up close.
“Just watching something brand new be manifested, it’s a wondrous thing to behold,” Powell Jobs told FT.
She described the evolution of ideas, from design talks that manifest into a tangible prototype that is then improved upon to become “even better.” During the same interview, Ive was more tight-lipped about the mystery product that is not a smartphone.
The FT interview also sees the two reflecting on their front-row seat — and in Ive’s case, his direct contribution to — some of the most transformative technology in the past 30 years, namely the iPhone.
While Ive led the design team for the iPhone, Powell Jobs was married to the man Ive once called his “spiritual partner at Apple.”
Today and in other recent interviews, Ive has expressed a sense of responsibility for some of the less-than-positive side effects made possible by his creations, unpacking his complicated relationship with the iPhone.
“If you make something new, if you innovate, there will be consequences unforeseen, and some will be wonderful and some will be harmful,” he said.
It’s clear that there are “dark uses for certain types of technology,” Powell Jobs said.
“You can only look at the studies being done on teenage girls and on anxiety in young people, and the rise of mental health needs, to understand that we’ve gone sideways,” Powell Jobs told FT. “Certainly, technology wasn’t designed to have that result. But that is the sideways result.”
A spokesperson for Powell Jobs declined to comment further. OpenAI and Ive did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
With recent reports indicating that Ive and Altman are exploring a potentially screenless AI device, the former Apple design chief is striking an optimistic note, suggesting it will improve upon the smartphone. He told the publication that the design of his next device is being created with the idea in mind that “humanity deserves better.”
